Wargame: AirLand Battle

considering armor, firepower, additional ATGM and so on. what´s your suggested priority for the stabilizers when you choose a tank for your deck? e.g.

1. ap-power2. ATGM3. rate of fire4. armor5. ...

an example the T-80VB and the T-64BV technically just differ in details and the costs are even too. i was considering to pick the T-64BV over the T-80BV, because of the little better accuracy, ap-power, autonomy and fuel capacity. however, the stabilizers with the T-64BV are pretty much not existant. searching the web i found many poeple suggesting tanks with bad stabilizers. therefore i am not sure on how paranoide i should be about tanks to have stabilizers or not.

It depends on the deck you're building and the way you intend to play it. Stabilisers can be very useful on a deck which hinges on mobile armour engagements, but usually personally I consider them to be a nice extra more than a true requirement. As for the rest, that also heavily depends; if I'm putting together a heavy armour deck, I like to go all-out on the armour and firepower, but if I'm building a high-mobility deck, or an infantry-focused one, I'll focus on other things. For a mixed deck, I prefer a spread of cheaper, low- to mid-end tanks, mid- to high-end main-line ones, and a smattering of high-tier heavy armour, ideally.

I think stabilizers are more of a bonus, not something you should pay too much attention to. The most important thing in tank battles is the front armor. You want to take hits on the front armor. If you expose your side/rear armor to the enemy, you will take tremendous damage very quickly, and hence you will also lose morale very quickly, resulting in reduced accuracy and rate of fire. Keeping that front armor pointed towards the enemy reduces the damage you take, which means you take less of a morale penalty as well, ultimately giving you better odds of winning.

What does that have to do with stabilizers? If you are going to move your tanks during a battle, then not only do you get reduced accuracy due to the movement penalty, but you will also expose your side or rear armor. So what you want to do in most cases is hold position and let the tank point the front armor towards the enemy. This of course makes the stabilizer pretty much completely irrelevant during the battle.

At the end of the day it's rather simple. Good stabilizers can only be found on heavy tanks. If you expose the side or rear armor of those heavy tanks (and waste their true potential which is the heavy front armor), then you will very quickly lose them. So you cannot constantly be moving the heavy tanks during a battle. Hence, stabilizers are optional, not mandatory, if you want to win.

The situations where stabilizers can be useful are limited:

- You get ambushed while your tanks are moving along a road. Due to the stabilizers, your tanks get a bit higher chance than usual to defend themselves and push through the ambush successfully.

- You are moving directly towards the enemy, the enemy is already in range, but he can't hurt you (his weapons are too weak), and you want to rush the enemy because you can and feel over-confident. The stabilizer will allow you to fire a bit more accurately than usual while moving forward. But really, a stabilizer doesn't really add much in such situations because you already have the upper-hand.

- You are retreating by reversing your tanks away from the enemy. The stabilizer allows your tanks to keep firing a bit more accurately than usual while moving backwards.

The above are exceptions to a normal situation. In most cases, the enemy will be far away in front of you, and your tanks will be trying to snipe said enemy from long range. Or your tanks are somewhat close to the enemy in which case the fight is over rather quickly, meaning that there's little point in trying to move. Stabilizers don't contribute in normal circumstances.

What is important in those normal circumstances?

1. High frontal armor to stay alive and reduce the impact of morale penalties. If your unit takes enough damage, he will become panicked, which reduces his accuracy and rate of fire (at which point you can consider the unit to be combat ineffective, unless the unit has very high accuracy). So armor can reduce the damage and hence decrease the impact of morale penalties.

2. High AP to be able to penetrate heavy tanks at max range, or to simply do more damage to tanks in general (more damage = more morale damage on the enemy unit = less accuracy and slower rate of fire on the enemy unit).

3. Accuracy so that you will be able to hit the enemy at all. Although, you can get away with low accuracy if you position your tanks in such places where the enemy must get close, which is why accuracy is the least important in this list. But accuracy is still pretty damn useful overall because it allows your unit to be more effective at max range and if you have high accuracy, the morale accuracy penalty makes a bit less of an impact on your unit.